After The Ashes
by autumn.in.mist
Summary: The war is over, and Harry Potter has finally fallen, taking the Dark Lord with him. But with the aid of Necromancy, the Dark Lord rises once more, and for the surviving witches and wizards of the Light, every day is a constant struggle of life and death.


_Summary:_ The war is over, and Harry Potter has finally fallen before the Dark Lord's curse. Death Eaters now roam the streets freely, and not even the purebloods are safe, and the remaining wizards and witches of the Light side seek refuge in abandoned houses, trying to do what little they can to protect the helpless Muggles. But a life of constantly being hunted is not easy, and every day is another struggle.

_Note:_ Contains some slash (mostly in the form ofSirius/Remus) and a lot of het pairings (canon and other). Flashbacks abound. May or may not contain graphic violence in later chapters, so the rating is M just in case. The dates are from the Lexicon.

* * *

There are some things not even the strongest person on Earth can control.

Death is generally considered to be one of those things, but it is not so.

But let me start from the beginning of this sad tale of a boy who, despite all odds, triumphed against evil time and time again, each time the cost getting greater.

It all started one cold and stormy night in early winter, 1979. A young woman, just over twenty and named for the ancient prophetess Sibyll, sat in a pub in Hogsmeade, known as The Hog's Head. She was waiting for the then Headmaster of Hogwarts, none other than the renowned Albus Dumbledore.

Her name was Sybill Patricia Trelawney. She was a direct descendant of Cassandra Trelawney. Though a Seer at heart, often her predictions were just the tiniest bit off. I can name a few off the top of my head, but I won't trouble you with my rambling. That night, however, she was dead on. But the prophecy would eventually come to spell doom for not just the Wizarding world, but the world in general.

But first came the deaths of two wonderful people, as a result of the prophecy and a spy listening in to the interview.

Lily and James Potter were both famous in their own right, Lily as a respected (even if just established as one) Healer and James as a well-known Auror. In the summer of the year after the prophecy was made, born as the seventh month drew to a close, Lily Potter gave birth to a baby boy. Sirius Black, a close friend of the family, tried to persuade them to name the poor child Sirius Harry James Potter, but after Lily's best friend whacked him soundly on the arm, he shut up. And so the little boy became Harry James Potter.

The next year, Lily took some time off work to look after her son. Sirius and the two other Marauders, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew tried to convince her to let them baby-sit Harry, but it was to no avail. Harry's 'Munkle Pa'foot, Munkle Mooey and Munkle Wor'tail' adored the boy, but come December, tragedy struck, unbeknownst to all except Peter.

Peter Pettigrew became a traitor. No, that isn't the right phrasing for it. He'd been passing information to Voldemort since 1979, but around this time, he started actually believing in what the Death Eaters were taught - the pureblood theories. Before this, there was a part of him that churned with guilt and wished that he were stronger, but the Dark Arts are highly tempting, and before he knew it, he was completely sucked in to Voldemort's beliefs. However, the guilty part of him still existed, and every time Lily smiled at him, James convinced them to prank someone, or Harry beamed at him and said, in a baby voice 'Munkle Wor'tail!' a little part of him withered. He tried to convince himself that these were not his friends, that they didn't care for him, and in the end, he succeeded all too well.

Then Voldemort began launching attacks on the Potters. They went into hiding, asking Sirius to be their Secret Keeper.

Sirius declined, saying he was too obvious. At that time, the Marauders' friendships had begun to fragment, and Sirius suspected Remus. So Peter Pettigrew became their Secret Keeper.

Some wonder what would have happened had he not been Secret Keeper. Those are the people who loathe him, but ironically, if Peter had never been made Secret Keeper, the Dark Lord would not have fled, little more than mere mist and vapour, and many more would have died over the years.

But I digress. The Potters left Potter Manor (also known as Fireflower Manor, as named by their age-old ancestor, Bowman Wright) and took up residence in a house in the nearby village of Godric's Hollow. The Fidelius charm was performed, and the course of their world changed forever. That October the 24th was quite possibly, the worst night in Wizarding history.

On that dark, freezing Halloween, the Dark Lord marched into the house the Potters were staying at, planning on killing Harry. No one really knows who else was there that fateful night, and many suspect we shall never know.

His killing curse rebounded, and he fled into the forests of Albania.

Harry grew up, abused and starved by the Dursleys. Mainly by Vernon Dursley, though his cousin bullied him frequently. But Petunia Dursley was a different case. She disliked Harry because of his similarity to James, but Harry's eyes reminded her of her dead sister, and she could not bring herself to cause the boy to suffer even more. So she settled with scolding him to death and turning a blind eye to her husband and son's treatment of the boy.

Everyone knows what happened over the course of the next few years. The Dark Lord rose again, and his first victim was Cedric Diggory. Then Sirius Black died. After that, the deaths became more and more frequent, and then Albus Dumbledore died. Following his death, someone died every two or three days. Nothing like the first war, but honestly, nothing could be.

But Harry's seventh year is where things get hazy - I know what happened, of course, but I am Destiny, and merely the narrator of the aftermaths of the last battle of the war, not of what precluded it.

Despite this, I must tell the story of the final battle as well as I can. No details - those are private, and I am not nearly so callous.

On a Halloween seventeen years after his parents' deaths, Harry and the Dark Lord face off against one another in what would come to be known as the Battle of Hogwarts. In the beginning, it looked like the Light would triumph. But as the battle drew to a close, the odds evened.

Not even I, one of the people who spun out these people's lives, know exactly what happened between them. All I know is that a great burst of magic enveloped the grounds, the words 'I'm sorry, Ginny, but this is where my journey ends… I love you' echoed throughout the grounds, and both Harry Potter and the Dark Lord were no more.

The Death Eaters stood shocked for a moment, before they began trying to Apparate away. It, surprisingly, worked, as the amount of pure magic that the death of two such powerful wizards had let off detonated the wards almost completely - at least around that particular area. The Dark Lord's body was nowhere to be seen.

No one there could ever forget Ginny Weasley's bloodcurdling scream. No one could blame her for stumbling, dazed, over to the place where the burst had taken place, kneeling in front of his body and sobbing her heart out, fingers interlocked with his. She had just lost her fiancé and the father of her unborn child. Hermione Granger, one of his best friends and akin to his sister in all but blood, started crying, holding on desperately to a bloodstained Ron Weasley, who merely stared at his brother-but-not in silence, eyes heavy.

All around the battlefield, members of the light side could be seen crying, or staring in shock at the body of their hero. The only sound

But that, sadly, was not the end of this tragic, twisted fairytale. It was more like one of Shakespeare's tragedies - yes, I am aware of him, and I have read his work. Being an almost deity does have its perks.

Necromancy is a dark, dark form of magic. But it is possible, though the amount of power and sacrifices needed is enormous. It requires highly skilled wizards and witches to perform the ritual, and most importantly, the sacrifice of a mother and her unborn child. It is Ancient Magic, far more powerful and much older than Old Magic. There are other forms of Ancient Magic, true, but this is probably the darkest.

The Death Eaters didn't care about the moral implications. The rituals were laid out, the magic performed, everything done perfectly down to the most finicky of details.

And the Dark Lord rose again.

So here this sorry tale begins, and I shall do my best to narrate these people's lives.

This is an account of what happened after that battle, of how they attempted to patch their already broken lives up, of how they tried to protect Harry's unborn child, of their triumphs… and their losses.

This is an account of what happened… after the ashes.


End file.
